FOCUSONFAITH Participating in Christ and partaking of the One Loaf

As a young priest and bishop, Venerable Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan had great ministerial success, from the formation of seminarians, men and women religious, laity and youth to the constructing of Catholic schools, promotion of lay movements and missions for evangelization. But all this came to an abrupt end with the fall of Saigon in 1975. Arrested on the pretense of conspiring with the Vatican after Pope Paul VI named him coadjutor bishop of the capital of South Vietnam a week before it fell into the hands of the communist government, for the next 13 years Bishop Van Thuan was imprisoned, suffering unspeakable physical and mental torture, nine years of which were in solitary confinement.

In the darkness of his prison cell, at the height of his most grueling humiliation and in complete isolation, when all hope seemed lost, he lamented, “Many times

FAITH FUNDAMENTALS

FATHER

MICHAEL VAN SLOUN